It's because the integrations with existing products are arbitrary and poorly thought through, the same way that software imposed by executive fiat in BigCo offices for trend-chasing reasons has always been.

petekoomen made this point recently in a creative way: AI Horseless Carriages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43773813 - April 2025 (478 comments)

Also, everyone who requires these sophisticated models now needs to send everything to the gatekeepers. You could argue that we already send a lot of data to public clouds. However, there was no economically viable way for cloud vendors to read, interpret, and reuse my data — my intellectual property and private information. With more and more companies forcing AI capabilities on us, it's often unclear who runs those models and who receives the data and what is really happening to the data.

This aggregation of power and centralisation of data worries me as much as the shortcomings of LLMs. The technology is still not accurate enough. But we want it to be accurate because we are lazy. So I fear that we will end up with many things of diminished quality in favour of cheaper operating costs — time will tell.

I don't think this is true. A lot of people had no interest until smartphones arrived. Doing anything on a smartphone is a miserable experience compared to using a desktop computer, but it's more convenient. "Worse but more convenient" is the same sales pitch as for AI, so I can only assume that AI will be accepted by the masses too.

There are open source or affordable, paid alternatives for everything the author mentioned. However, there are many places where you must use these things due to social pressure, lock-in with a service provider (health insurance co, perhaps), and yes unfortunately I see some of these things as soon or now unavoidable.

Another commenter mentioned that ChatGPT is one of the most popular websites on the internet and therefore users clearly do want this. I can easily think of two points that refute that: 1. The internet has shown us time and time again that popularity doesn’t indicate willingness to pay (which paid social networks had strong popularity…?) 2. There are many extremely popular websites that users wouldn’t want to be woven throughout the rest of their personal and professional digital lives

Please don't. I am going to read this email. Adding more text just makes me read more.

I am sure there's a common use case of people who get a ton of faintly important email from colleagues. But this is my personal account and the only people contacting me are friends. (Everyone else should not be summarized; they should be trashed. And to be fair I am very grateful for Gmail's excellent spam filtering.)

It is like Clippy, which no one wanted. Hopefully, like Clippy, "AI" will be scrapped at some point.

It seems here on the ground in non-tech bubble land, people use ChatGPT a ton and lean hard on AI features.

When Google judges the success of bolted on AI, they are looking at how Jane and John General Public use it, not how xleet007 uses it(or doesn't).

There is also the fact that AI is still just being bolted onto things now. The next iteration of this software will be AI native, and the revisions after that will iron out big wrinkles.

When settings menus and ribbon panels are optional because you can just tell the program what to do in plain English, that will be AI integration.

The thing that really chafes me about this AI, irrespective of whether it is awesome or not, is emitting all of the information to some unknown server. To go with another Zappa reference, AI becomes The Central Scrutinizer[2].

I predict an increasing use of Free Software by discerning people who want to maintain more control of their information.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPFIkty4Zvk

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe%27s_Garage#Lyrical_and_sto...

In fact I also tried the communication part - outside of Outlook - but people don't like superficial AI polish

Only when I went to cancel[1], suddenly they made me aware that there was a "classic" subscription that was the normal price, without CoPilot. So they basically just upsized everyone to try to force uptake.

[1] - I'm in the AI business and am a user and abuser of AI daily, but I don't need it built directly into every app. I Already have AI subscriptions and local models and solutions.

This stuff costs so much, they need mass adoption. ASAP. I didn't think about it before, but I wonder how quickly they need the adoption.

Highways.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, there was someone who would bag your groceries, and someone who would clean your window at the gas station. Now you do self-checkout. Has anyone asked for this? Your quality of life is worse, the companies are automating away humanity into something they think is more profitable for them.

In a society where you don't have government protection for such companies, there would be other companies who provide a better service whose competition would win. But when you have a fat corrupt government, lobbying makes sense, and crony-capitalism births monopolies which cannot have any competition. Then they do whatever they want to you and society at large, and they don't owe you, you owe them. Your tax dollars sponsor all of this even more than your direct payments do.

The top of the list has got to be that one of their testimonials presented to investors is from "DrDeflowerMe". It's also interesting to me because they list financials which position them as unbelievably tiny: 6,215 subscribing accounts, 400 average new accounts per month, which to me sounds like they have a lot of churn.

I'm in my third year of subscribing and I'm actively looking for a replacement. This "Start Engine" investment makes me even more confident that's the right decision. Over the years I've paid nearly $200/year for this and watched them fail to deliver basic functionality. They just don't have the team to deliver AI tooling. For example: 2 years ago I spoke with support about the screen that shows you your credit card numbers being nearly unreadable (very light grey numbers on a white background), which still isn't fixed. Around a year ago a bunch of my auto transfers disappeared, causing me hundreds of dollars in late fees. I contacted support and they eventually "recovered" all the missing auto-transfers, but it ended up with some of them doubled up, and support stopped responding when I asked them to fix that.

I question if they'll be able to implement the changes they want, let alone be able to support those features if they do.

It’s like IPV6, if it really was a huge benefit to the end user, we’d have adopted it already.

I also feel an urge to build spaces in the internet just for humans, with some 'turrets' to protect against AI invasion and exploitation. I just don't know what content would be shared in those spaces because AI is already everywhere in content production.

I say I imagine it's annoying because I've yet to actually be annoyed much but I get the idea. I actually quite like the Google AI bit - you can always not read it if you don't want to. AI generated content on youtube is a bit of a mixed bag - it tends to be kinda bad but you can click stop and play another video. My office 2019 is gloriously out of date and does that stuff I want without the recent nonsense.

I cannot take OP seriously when the post started like so. If you are using Microsoft services and products in 2025, well, it serves you right.

Big companies can force Microsoft, Google and alike to don't use companies data for AI training, small companies have no chance.

Everything nowadays is cloud based, all you need is internet and a browser. But nope, people and companies still using Windows, spending millions with AV software that they wouldn't have to if a decent Linux distro was being used instead.

By decent I mean user friendly such as Linux Mint or even worse Ubuntu (Ubuntu lost its way years ago, still a solid option for basic users, not for advanced users)

Software is loyal to the owner. If you don't own your software, software won't be loyal to you. It can be convenient for you, but as time passes and interest changes, if you don't own software it can turn against you. And you shouldn't blame Microsoft or it's utilities. It doesn't owe you anything just because you put effort in it and invested time in it. It'll work according to who it's loyal to, who owns it.

If it bothers you, choose software you can own. If you can't choose software you own now, change your life so you can in the future. And if you just can't, you have to accept the consequences.

Also the requests aren't answered locally. Your data is forwarded to the AI's DC, processed and the answer returned. You can be absolutely certain that they keep a copy of your data.

- me, a few years ago.

I find the whole situation with regard to AI utterly ridiculous and boring. While those algos might have some interesting applications, they're not as earth-shattering as we are made to believe, and their utility is, to me at least, questionable.

As a data point, the "Stop Killing Games" one has passed the needed 1M signatures so is in good shape:

https://www.stopkillinggames.com

People would be less upset if ai is shown to support the person. This also allows that person to curate the output and ignore it if needed before sharing it, so it’s a win/win.

But is the big money in revolution?

"Most people won't pay for AI voluntarily-just 8% according to a recent survey. So they need to bundle it with some other essential product."

"You never get to decide."

Silicon Valley and Redmond have been operating this way for quite some time.

They have been effectively removing choice long before this "AI" push. Often accomplished through "defaults".

This "AI" nonsense may be the most bold example.

"But if AI is bundled into existing businesses, Silicon Valley CEOs can pretend that AI is a moneymaker, even if the public is lukewarm or hostile."

"The AI business model would collapse overnight if they needed consumer opt-in. Just pass that law, and see how quickly the bots disappear. "

"You don't get to choose. You're never asked. It just shows up. Now you have to deal with it."

"If they gave people a choice, they would reject this tyranny masquerading as innovation."

"The AI business model would collapse overnight if they needed consumer opt-in."

We never get to find out what would happen.

One comment I would like to add here.

By removing meaningful choice and creating fabricated "demand" these so-called "tech" companies (unnecessary intermediaries) when faced with antitrust allegations then try to argue something like, "Everyone is using it therefore everyone wants it." And, "This shows everyone prefers us over the alternatives."

"Frank Zappa offers a possible mission statement for Microsoft back in 1976, a few months after the company is founded."

RIP.

Some are excited about it. Some are actually making something cool with AI. Very few are both.

But using it heavily has a corollary effect: engineers learn less as a result of their dependence on it.

Less learning all around equals enshittification. Really not looking forward to this.

Tyranny is a real thing which exists in the world and is not exemplified by “product manager adding text expansion to word processor.”

The natural state of capitalism is trying things which get voted on by money. It’s always subject to boom-bust cycles and we are in a big boom. This will eventually correct itself once the public makes its position clear and the features which truly suck will get fixed or removed.

I don’t see the utility, all I see is slop and constant notifications in google.

You can say skill issue but that’s kind of the point; this was all dropped on me by people who don’t understand it themselves. I didn’t ask or want to built the skills to understand ai. Nor did my bosses: they are just following the latest wave. We are the blind leading the blind.

Like crypto ai will prove to be a dead end mistake that only enabled grifters

Dear administrator,

We recently added the best of Google AI to Workspace plans to help your teams accomplish more, faster. In addition, we added new, simple to use security insights and controls to help you keep your business data safe.

We also announced updated subscription pricing. Your subscription will be subject to this updated pricing starting July 7, 2025.

We’ve provided additional information below to guide you through this change. What this means for your organization

New Workspace features

Your updated pricing reflects the many new features now included in your Google Workspace edition. With these changes, you can:

    Summarize long email threads, draft replies, and compose professional emails faster and easier with Help me write in Gmail
    Write and refine documents with Gemini in Docs
    Generate charts and insights with Gemini in Sheets
    Automatically capture meeting notes so you can focus on the conversation with Take notes for me in Meet
    Get AI assistance with brainstorming, researching, coding, data analysis, and more with Gemini Advanced
    Accelerate learning by uploading your docs, PDFs, videos, websites, and more to get instant insights and podcast-style Audio Overviews with NotebookLM Plus
    Enhance your organization’s security with security advisor, a new set of insights and tools. Use security advisor for threat defense with app access protection, account security with Gmail Enhanced Safe Browsing, and data protection capabilities
    Customize email campaigns in Gmail. Add color schemes, logos, images, and other design elements

The specific date that your subscription price will increase depends on your plan type, number of user licenses, and other factors.

*Prices will be updated in all local payment currencies.

If you have an Annual/Fixed-Term Plan, your subscription will be subject to updated pricing on your next plan renewal starting July 7, 2025. We will provide you with more specific information at least 30 days before updates to your Google Workspace plan pricing are made. What you need to do

No action is required from you. Features have already rolled out to Google Workspace Business Plus subscriptions, including AI features in many additional languages, and subscription prices will be updated automatically starting July 7, 2025.

We know that data security and compliance are top priorities for business leaders when adopting AI, and we are committed to helping you keep your data safe. You can understand how to effectively utilize generative AI in your organization, and learn how to keep your data confidential and protected. We’re here to help

If you wish to make changes to your subscription or payment plan, please visit the Admin console. Find which edition and payment plan you have on Google Workspace Admin Help.

Refer to the Help Center for details regarding the AI features and price updates, including updated local currency pricing.

The AI community treats potential customers as invaders. If you report a problem, the entire thing turns on you trying to convince you that you're wrong, or that you reported a problem because you hate the technology.

It's pathetic. It looks like a viper's nest. Who would want to do business with such people?

"I don’t want AI customer service—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI responses to my Google searches—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI integrated into my software—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI sending me emails—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI music on Spotify—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI books on Amazon—but I don’t get a choice."

I said no. Respect my preferences.

People going to lord it over others in the pursuit of what they think is proper.

Society is over-rated, once it gets beyond a certain size.

Along the same lines, I am currently starting my morning with blocking ranges of IP addresses to get Internet service back, due to someone's current desire to SYN Flood my webserver, which being hosted in my office, affects my office Internet.

It may soon come to a point where I choose to block all IP addresses except a few to get work done.

People gonna be people.

sigh.

The same issue plagues many private companies. I’ve seen employees spend days drafting documents that a free tool like Mistral could generate in seconds, leaving them 30-60 minutes to review and refine. There's a lot of resistance from the public. They're probably thinking that their job will be saved if they refuse to adopt AI tools.